


February Words #9 - Lack

by StaringAtTheTwinSuns



Series: February Words (2018) [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Baby Ben Solo, Fluff and Angst, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Good Parent Han Solo, Jedi, Leia Organa-centric, Multi, OT3, POV Leia Organa, Polyamory, The Force, family life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 21:30:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13622049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StaringAtTheTwinSuns/pseuds/StaringAtTheTwinSuns
Summary: Leia just doesn't have it in her to become a Jedi. She knows she needs to tell Luke, and sooner, rather than later. But she's also fairly sure it'll break his heart when she does.An attempt to fill in a bit of headcanon regarding the "Why didn't Leia become a Jedi?" debate.Part of my February prompt challenge, but also a STAND-ALONE. No need to have read the others.





	February Words #9 - Lack

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! This is a part of my February prompt challenge, but you don't have to have read the other 8 to understand this one.
> 
> Not EVERYTHING in these is my headcanon, but I got to work quite a few bits of my headcanon into this one. :)
> 
> This was written in one day and was not betaed... such is the nature of a prompt challenge!
> 
> All comments including concrit are appreciated! Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

~6 ABY~

For the past six years, Leia had always had someone to talk to.

It wasn’t that she had never been lonely—there were times her heart ached for her father, for home. For Luke, when he was gone, and then for Han, when he was. But there had always been _someone_ —even Chewie, or Lando. Someone to listen. She'd never been alone.

She was alone now. At least, she felt it. Even as she loaded Ben into his carrier, talking to him, naming everything around them so he’d grow up learning all the names of the plants and the birds, a different kind of silence held her back.

“I don’t think I can do it,” she confided in her son, as they walked up the hill to the daycare center. “How can I tell your Daddy Luke that I don’t want to… I _can’t_ be a Jedi?”

Ben seemed to consider this, with all the attention he’d give a soap bubble or a cookie. He looked her straight in the eye. Her heart melted, then broke a little when all he said was, “Bah!”

***

Han and Chewie were home that day, doing repairs on the Falcon. They’d come home from their last reconnaissance mission with too many scratches, and a turret cannon hanging on by a corroded metal thread.

It had both comforted and scared her, to feel their presences in the Force—alive, but battered and terrified—rawer and more in focus than she’d felt them before.

“That’s good,” Luke had said. “It means you’re getting stronger. Now, you have to let go of your fear.”

But she couldn’t.

She didn’t get visions of the future, like Luke did, at least nothing that was obviously so. She felt the _now_ , the immediate, cold and clear and brutal. And she didn’t really want to anymore.

 _Calm._ She forced herself to breathe. Luke could sense her, wherever he was. She knew she needed to talk to him about this… decision? Was it even that? But until then, she couldn't let him know.

Han was on the underside of the _Falcon_ , welding replacement cannon parts into place. As Leia approached the ship, he cut the power and lifted his safety visor to check his work.

“Need any help?” Leia ducked under the edge of the _Falcon_ ’s main saucer, reminded suddenly, sharply of their long trip to Bespin. “I think I still remember how to use one of these.” She wasn't really sure, but she hoped it was true.

Han gave her a look. It was definitely one of those _I know you’re not really here to help me with my ship_ looks. But this was practically a ritual between them. They both needed to work in silence for awhile, to work up to what needed to be said.

“Here.” He handed her a hydrospanner. “Tighten those up, over there.”

***

By the time the sun was high in the sky, sweat was pouring down Han’s face in dusty black rivulets, and Leia was pretty sure she must look the same.

“So, what’d you really come out here for?” he asked her. “And don’t try to lie to me. I can tell.”

Leia could sense Chewie in the house, getting lunch ready. The droids were off with Luke, somewhere offworld. Leia still wasn’t sure if Han could really understand her problem. He didn’t know much about the Force, anyway. But he knew Luke as well as she did.

“It’s… it’s about Luke.”

Han’s face lined with worry. “I thought he was just on some research trip?”

“He is.” Leia shook her head. “He’s fine, Han. It’s... more about me, okay?”

Leia wasn’t really used to talking about herself, even though she knew that, with Han, she could. She’d been trained for so long to put planet, Alliance, and now Republic first. But this secret was so heavy that if she didn’t tell someone, it seemed it might crush her somehow.

“Can we take a walk?” she said.

Han nodded. “Yeah. Sure.”

They walked away from the city, out into the fields, where new fast-growing trees had started to raise their branches above them, repairing the damage the Empire had done. “I don’t know how to say this,” Leia admitted. “It feels like I’m being… ungrateful to Luke. Or disrespectful, I guess, of all he’s done.”

“You two have a fight or something?” Han’s voice grew deep, and Leia didn’t have to reach out to feel his fear. It licked at her, darkening something, like a hollowness more than a presence. They shared the same fear. If either of them lost this…

“We’d lose everything.”

“Hey. No one’s losing anything.” Han stopped walking. He took Leia by the shoulders and hugged her against his chest with a strength that surprised her. “Leia. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“It’s… this Jedi thing.” Just saying the word made her feel lighter. “I promised Luke I’d let him teach me. And I’ve been trying to be what he needs me to be, but I don’t think I can do it. I’m just not like him, Han. I just… I can’t.”

Han didn’t answer right away. He just held her eyes, nodding. “You, uh…” He hesitates. “You seem to be getting pretty good to me.”

It wasn’t that, though. Leia knew what he was saying. She had improved, at least in the visible ways—she could lift things, sense things, knew the basics of lightsaber combat. When it came down to it though, she wasn’t PASSIONATE about it. It was nice to be able to have Luke there in her mind, now. That little warm pulse that let her know that, wherever he was, he was okay. And yes, it was nice to be able to call Ben’s dropped spoons and Han’s dropped socks, and a hundred other things to her hand.

It wasn’t nice, to know what the Dark Side felt like. But it was also probably important, Leia knew.

But it wasn’t how she wanted to spend the rest of her life. Her eyes didn’t light up, the way Luke’s did, when he found some new bit of information about the Jedi. She’d felt mostly  sad and empty the one time she’d spoken to their biological father—who hadn’t really seemed like Vader, but also wasn’t her father the way Bail Organa had been.

She tried not to let Luke see it. That was probably one of her strong points. She’d been using the Force as a shield before she even knew it, just like Luke had been using it to help him fly. But it was making her miserable, this sense of expectation.

“I don’t want to be a Jedi,” she confessed, unable to take her eyes from the ground. “Luke’s so good at it, but I’m not. And it scares me.”

Han just kept holding her. “Yeah. It scares me sometimes too.”

“But if I don’t…” Tears were welling up in Leia’s eyes. “I knew Luke says it’s not necessarily hereditary, that we’re not the only ones who even _can_. But he wants it to be me. At least, for me to be first one he trains.”

“He’s lonely,” Han said.

“He has us. He has Chewie.” But Leia knew he was at least partly right.

“He doesn’t have anybody who understands this Force stuff. Everywhere we go, people treat us like… like we’re not even people. Especially him. Like he’s some kind of living font of wisdom or whatever. Annoys the hell out of me.” Han gave a short laugh. “But Luke… I think it hurts him more than it shows.”

Leia nodded, and swallowed her tears. Han was right. She knew he was. And if it came down to her own happiness or Luke’s, she’d choose Luke’s. She knew she would.

“I know,” she whispered. “He needs someone who cares about it like he does.”

“But that’s not you, is it?”

Leia blinked up, through her tears. Han pushed a stray strand of hair from her cheek and looked her right in the eyes.

“I love you, Leia,” he said. “Luke does too. He’s all stressed out about this Jedi thing right now, but… You know, we do talk about you when you’re not here.”

“Do I want to know what you say?”

“You already do.” He brushed a tear from her cheek, which left his thumb inky black, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. He pressed his forehead to hers, so their noses were almost touching. So there was nowhere to look but in his eyes. “We say, ‘You know what? I love Leia. And I want her to be happy. And if there was ever anything I could do to make her happy, I’d want to know what that was.’ And whichever of us didn’t say that says, ‘Yeah? Well, me too.’

“Now. Let’s go eat whatever Chewie’s making, and get back to work on the ship. And when we’re done with that, we’ll go pick up our son.”

Leia nodded. She knew that was probably what she needed. A normal day. A normal night. Luke would be back in the morning, and she knew she couldn’t put this off much longer. To protect their happiness. Protect this life.

***

She woke with one leg looped over Han’s, one arm across his chest and her head on his shoulder.

Behind her, Luke’s chest rose and fell, a perfect fit to cup the curve of her back. He had one arm wrapped around her, his hand barely touching her stomach, so heavy with sleep that he didn’t even stir when she did.

He’d come home early.

She pressed her eyes closed as tight as she could, focused on making her world dark enough to shut out the twisting agony in her heart. He loved her and Han enough to fly across the galaxy for a couple hours of spooning. And today, she was going to break his heart.

It wasn’t that she thought he’d leave. She didn’t, really. He loved it here too much, loved Han too much, and Ben. And he loved her too; Leia knew he still would, even if he grew just a little bit harder. A little more distant. A little more alone.

She kept her eyes closed, but let herself relax. Reached out, as Luke had taught her. The Force was alive—in her, around her in a river, rushing in places and slow and placid in others. Luke and Han were tangles of emotion—Luke more controlled, with currents swirling deep under the surface, Han shining like screaming, all his light and his dark on display.

To go any deeper would have felt like prying. She told herself that that was all it was. Ben, in the next room, was a bright little glow of contentment, untwisted yet by experience and time.

If that had been all she could feel, she could bear it. If there hadn’t been that _other_ , that beyond. The little deaths of insects and rodents reminded her of Alderaan. The jealous, vengeful thoughts that snatched at her from the people around her were weaker, watered down versions of the poison she’d felt in Vader. Things she’d sensed without even knowing it, that came back now whenever she _saw_.

But what scared her the most was the darkness in her own heart. The fear that had welled up, when Han and Chewie had been in that fight. The moment of bitter loathing when a man had leered at her on the train on Coruscant. The sudden, unmeditated urge to lash out at that meeting where an old Clone Wars veteran had casually mentioned “Jedi scum.”

Luke was forgiving. Sometimes blindly optimistic. He was so stubborn sometimes about seeing the good. Leia saw everything. And she didn’t think she could just forgive everyone. She didn’t think she could trust herself with the Force. And ever since Luke had started pushing her to really train, that fear had been eating her alive.

She was almost glad when Ben called, “Mama!” from his crib on the far side of the room. He needed breakfast. He needed to be changed. Those were all things Leia could do.

Luke was so deep in sleep that he only moaned softly when she slid out from under his arm, off the foot of the bed. Han’s eyes fluttered open, but when he saw that Leia was getting Ben, he just rolled over, next to Luke, where Leia had been.

She fed Ben alone, her voice too bright as she enunciated each of the foods on his plate. “And the hangar opens up! And the _Falcon_ flies in!”

Ben giggled, and half of the food flew out of his mouth, and Leia couldn’t help but laugh with him.

When they were both changed and most of the mush wiped out of their hair, she took him back to the bedroom and let him crawl all the way up the bed to his dads.

“Hey there, Ben.” Han picked him up and swung him up like he was flying, and Ben laughed and squealed in glee.

Leia’s heart felt like someone had it in a death grip. What was going to happen to this, when she…?

“Quiet, little man!” Han stage-whispered. “Looks like your Daddy Luke had a rough night.”

“I’m awake.” Luke cracked a tired smile. “Did you miss me, big guy?”

Ben wriggled into his arms, and Han looked from Leia to Luke and back again. “Today a Jedi day?” he asked.

“Mm-hm.” Luke nodded. “And you know what _that_ means, Ben? It means today’s a Daddy Han day!”

He passed Ben back to Han—flying again, over the blankets.

Then he looked up at Leia. “Just give me a couple of minutes, okay?”

Leia didn’t answer. She just nodded. Bit her lip. If she said anything, she thought she would cry.

***

They walked in silence, out past the town, to this place up in the hills where Luke would meditate. It wasn’t unusual for them not to talk, to let their breathing and their footfalls and the bond that burned between them say the things that words never could.

Luke was worried.

Leia could feel it, a sour little tugging, like a thread had come loose and gotten snagged, pulling it out. She didn’t know if it was because of her, if something had happened on his trip, or if there was something else bothering him. But the ache in his presence harmonized with hers, casting the bright day with an invisible shadow.

"You haven't told me about your trip yet." Her voice was forced, too bright now. It reminded her of the tone she'd used as a senator. She didn't want to use that tone with Luke.

If he noticed, though, he kept it from her, both in his body language and in the Force. "There's nothing to really tell," he said, with a smile like sweet and bitter coffee. "Just another dead end. Most of them are."

Leia stopped. "I'm sorry." She meant it, too, with all her heart. Luke would probably never be completely satisfied with all he'd recovered--about the Jedi, and about their family's past. But every little find, every precious little victory brought a joy to him that lit up their whole world. She remembered what Han had said, about him and Luke wanting to make Leia happy. Leia wanted to make them happy, too.

"Don't be," Luke said. He'd stopped walking too, in what wasn't really a clearing yet because these weren't really woods. "It's not your fault. There'll be more leads." He was trying to convince himself, she thought. Not her.

"There will be." She took a step closer, wanting to touch him, but afraid. She didn't have to do this now, not when he was already disappointed.

"Leia." He took her hands. "What's wrong?"

He could see, then. He could always see what she was feeling, and there was no way out that wouldn't hurt him now. If she lied, he would know she was hiding something. She closed her eyes, turned her head away.

"Luke, I... I have to tell you something. Don't be angry."

What she really meant to say was, _Don't be sad._

But he was. And maybe he would always be. The happiest and the saddest person she knew.

"How could I ever be angry with you?" And then he had his arm around her waist and was leading her up to this flat rock that looked out over the little city the three of them had at least made their half-the-time home.

Leia sat, with Luke beside her, her eyes fixed out on the horizon. "It's about..." She exhaled hard. "It's about this Jedi training. I don't... I don't think I can do it." She forced herself to look him in the eye.

"Leia." His smile was soft, his fingers careful as he traced a path down her temple, cheek, and chin. "You're doing... amazing," he said. "Much better than I did. I know we haven't had much time, with Ben..."

"It's not that." Her voice came out hard, and she knew she had to say it. Rip the bacta patch off, as her father used to tell her. Get the hard part over with, so you can heal.

"Luke," she said. "I don't want to be a Jedi. The Force... it scares me. I see things I never wanted to see."

She paused, waiting for his reaction. But in his eyes, his spirit, there was nothing but calm.

Finally, he said. "You're right. It does hurt, sometimes."

"It hurts me all the time."

"It shouldn't."

"But it does." Her voice cracked. "Luke, I know how much this means to you. I know you promised Master Yoda you'd keep this alive. And I'm grateful"--she could feel her eyes burning--"for all that you've taught me. But..." and suddenly she knew what she had to say to him. More than that, she thought she knew what he needed to hear.

"But you deserve an apprentice who _loves_ this," she said. "As much as you do, and more. And you deserve a partner, and a sister, who is happy. Whose time with you is... an escape. And not more work. I want to help you." She hadn't really known how true that was, until that moment.  "I want to help you find students who really have what it takes to be Jedi. And I just think... I can do that better from the political side."

A sadness washed over him. Leia could feel it, and see it in his face, felt it flow together into her own.

"I wish I'd known." That's all he said. He stood, and walked out to the overlook, and looked down at the city for what felt like a very long time.

It wasn't, really. A minute, or two, or maybe three or four. But it felt to Leia like a hundred years. She knew she had to wait, though. Let him come back on his own terms.

 _Unless he doesn't._ The thought kept playing in her head.

"Leia." Luke spoke to her, but kept looking out at the skyline. "Why didn't you tell me?"

He clenched his right hand. Leia felt it burn.

And now she knew what had hurt Luke the most--not that she wanted to quit, but that she'd lied to him, if not in words, than by coming out here and going through the training when her heart had never really been in it. He'd been lied to all his life, by people who said they loved him. And Leia was different. She should have been different. Yes, she'd promised once upon a time to learn about the Force. But she'd also promised all of herself to him.

"You're right," she said. "I should have told you. I just kept thinking, one more lesson, and I'd get it. I'd see what you saw. I'd feel that this is where my duty to the galaxy was. But the more I feel the Force, Luke, the more... it tells me this is wrong?"

She wasn't entirely sure of that. She wasn't sure of any of the visions she saw. They were muddled connections, too crossed over each other to make much sense at the best of times. But she remembered how it felt, resisting Vader's mind probe. Feeling Alderaan. Feeling the Force. And the feeling she felt now, when she thought about the Senate, was like that. But good, and strong, and light.

"This isn't my path," she said. And that felt true, when she said it. "This isn't my path." More conviction this time, and she stood, and looked out at the city.  "You taught me this, Luke. To follow the Force. To follow what I know it's telling me. And it's telling me that I'm not supposed to be a Jedi...?" Her voice rose with the question she'd never asked. "I should have been honest. I'm sorry."

He lowered his head, his presence once again masked. And then, slowly, he turned to face her.

"I never wanted to make you unhappy."

"I know." Leia's voice caught in her throat.

"This isn't an easy path," Luke said. "I don't know if happy's the right word. I mean, you and Han and Ben make me happy, but being a Jedi... I don't know. Most of the time, it just feels right. Like this is where I need to be in my life now. It gets lonely." He gave her a sad smile. "But maybe that's right, too."

"You shouldn't be lonely." Leia took a step closer.

"I'm happy."

She knew he was.

"It's telling you the same thing, isn't it?" she said. "Luke?" And they were close enough to touch. She intertwined her fingers with his, looked up into his eyes. And she saw there the truth of what she was saying. "We may be twins. But we're not the same person."

He nodded, slowly. "I guess I've always known. But I _wanted_ it to be you."

There didn't seem to be much more to say, then. She tugged him lightly, gently, by the hand.

"Do you want to go home?" Luke asked, as they sat back down together on the rock.

"But today's a Daddy Han day."

And she could _feel_ his smile. Thank the Force for that.

"Then... we can stay up here, if you want?"

"For a little while, at least." She rested her head on his shoulder. They could stay here now, and work out the details later.

And the Force seemed to say that it was good.  



End file.
